Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | Jul 1, 2017

Death will overtake everybody; no one can escape from it. But death is not the same for everyone. Some have made God their goal in life; they speak and keep silence for His sake alone; their attention is focused entirely on the after-life. Death is for them the end of a long terrestrial journey towards their Lord.

Others have forgotten their Lord; they do not do things for God’s sake; they are traveling away from their Lord. They are like rebels who roam at large for a few days, and then death seizes them and brings them to justice.

Righteous people have a different attitude to death from the disobedient. They are concerned with what comes in the wake of death; they focus their attention on gaining an honourable position in the life after death. Those who disregard the existence of God and the Hereafter, on the other hand, are caught up on worldly affairs. Their ultimate ambition is worldly honour and prestige.

Under present circumstances, those who have consolidated their position on earth seem to be successful, but death will shatter this facade. It will become clear that those who seemed to have no base in the world were in fact standing on the most solid of foundations, while the position of those who had reached a high status in the world will be exposed as false. Death will obliterate everything; afterwards only that which has some worth in the after-life will remain.

We are obsessed with the world, which meets our eyes. We fail to pay attention to the call of truth. If we were to see the next life with our worldly vision, we would immediately submit to God. We would realize that if we do not submit to Him today, we will have to do so in the future world, when submission will profit no one.